He eyed her blond hair against the pillow, immaculate even in sleep. He should have guessed she was a Lloyd’s Name. Of course she was. She was exactly the sort of person who would be. If he’d only once thought to ask her, to check, to bring the subject up. But he’d taken to filtering out difficult subjects of conversation when he spoke to Cressida, just to avoid seeing that stupid frown of utter incomprehension.
Oh God. He should have guessed; he should have known. And if he’d known, could he have done anything? Could he have prevented this thing from happening? Could he have stopped it all in time? Charles gazed at the ceiling. He didn’t, wouldn’t dare find out the answer. The discovery that, by acting then, he could have avoided this black pit of despair would be too much to bear. A million pounds. A million pounds. Charles whispered it quietly to himself. It didn’t really mean anything to him.
The duvet rustled and Charles felt Cressida turning over. She opened her eyes and looked at him, at first with her normal sleepy early-morning expression – then, as she recollected her thoughts, with sudden dismay. Her hand came up to her cheek and touched it lightly. She didn’t wince as her fingers met the skin, but her touch was tender. Of course, thought Charles suddenly. That’s where I hit her. He stared at Cressida, appalled. It was all so sordid. Her eyes scanned his face uncertainly, then she pulled back the bedclothes and slowly got out of bed. She tottered to the bathroom, a tall, willowy figure in her long, white nightdress. Charles watched her numbly. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, call out to her or go after her. She was part of the nightmare. Until she spoke, none of it seemed real; if he ignored her, perhaps it would all go away. He turned over, buried his aching head beneath his pillow, and stared blankly into the mattress, wishing himself into oblivion.
Caroline and Ella were having breakfast on the terrace. Caroline had made what she considered to be the supreme effort of getting up, making some coffee, heating up some croissants, and taking it all outside, only to discover that Patrick wasn’t hungry, Charles and Cressida were still in bed, Martina had fed the twins, and all the others had breakfasted early before going to church.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said to Ella, gesturing to the breakfast table, ‘you must tell them I did all this. I can’t believe no-one’s here to appreciate it.’ She bit crossly into a croissant. ‘These are good, aren’t they?’ she added. ‘They’re from the new pâtisserie in Silchester. You must try it out before you go.’ Ella took a thoughtful sip of coffee.
‘I probably won’t be around long enough,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided to go to Italy sooner rather than later.’
‘But you’ve only just come back to England,’ objected Caroline.
‘I know,’ agreed Ella. ‘But I think I’ve seen enough of it.’
‘Seen enough of Charles, more like,’ said Caroline bluntly. ‘He had a bit of a nerve, didn’t he? Dragging you off for moonlit walks in the middle of the night? I would have told him where to go.’ Ella shrugged.
‘It was nice to see him. No, really,’ she added, at Caroline’s incredulous look. ‘I needed to get him out of my system.’
‘And have you?’
‘Well,’ said Ella, ‘I’m not sure he was still in it. But if he was, he isn’t any more.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Caroline. ‘As long as he didn’t sweet-talk you back into liking him.’ Ella’s mouth curved in amusement.
‘Perhaps he thought he did. He was very ardent.’
‘Ardent?’ Caroline stared at Ella for a few seconds. ‘Ardent as in . . . ardent?’
‘It was the middle of the night,’ pointed out Ella. With a deft movement she brought her legs up beneath her cross-legged on her chair, and shook back her hair. Caroline clapped her hand over her mouth and gazed at Ella with sparkling eyes.
‘I’m not even going to ask you my next question,’ she said in an excited voice, ‘because I don’t want to know the answer.’ She paused. ‘Except I do,’ she added hopefully.
‘It’s not important,’ said Ella.
‘How can you say that?’ demanded Caroline. ‘He’s married now.’
‘That’s not my fault.’
‘It’s not his wife’s fault, either,’ pointed out Caroline. She took a gulp of coffee and lit a cigarette. ‘Christ, I’d go barmy if Patrick did that to me.’
‘You don’t know what Charles did,’ said Ella.
‘No, but I can guess.’ Caroline gave a wicked cackle.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Ella, spreading her hands deprecatingly. ‘Over.’ She poured herself a glass of orange juice. ‘Poor Charles,’ she added.
‘Over?’ said Caroline suspiciously.
‘Maybe over,’ conceded Ella. ‘Maybe not. It’s funny, I’d half-forgotten what he was like. I had a different image of him in my mind. Perhaps I’d created it on purpose. But now I feel I don’t know him as well as I thought I did. And I would quite like to know him again. Know him as a person, rather than as a lover.’ She gave a little smile.
‘But what about his wife?’ insisted Caroline.
‘What about me? Where’s the symmetry in all this? I might have a husband, or a partner that no-one knows about. Charles might be the other man as much as I am the other woman.’
‘Have you got a husband?’ asked Caroline curiously. ‘You can’t have. You don’t look married.’
‘No, not a husband,’ said Ella, smiling down into her orange juice.
‘But someone. There is someone.’
‘There is someone,’ agreed Ella.
‘And don’t you feel bad, betraying them like that?’
‘Betraying? I’m not betraying anyone. A quick fuck isn’t the same as betrayal.’
‘Ah!’ said Caroline triumphantly. ‘So you did sleep with him.’
‘I didn’t sleep with him,’ said Ella. ‘I fucked him. Something else altogether. His wife slept with him. Or so I imagine.’ Caroline looked at her slightly puzzledly for a moment, then leant forward.
‘And what’s going to happen now?’ she said, lowering her voice unnecessarily to a confiding, gossipy tone.
‘Now?’ Ella’s voice rang like a bell through the garden. ‘I’m going to have some more coffee.’ She smiled at Caroline and reached for the cafetière. Caroline took a deep drag of her cigarette and looked around the garden. Ella obviously wasn’t going to settle down to a good girly chat. She frowned in slight annoyance, and stretched out a tanned leg from under her dressing-gown, admiring the smooth, brown skin against the white satin.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ she said suddenly, heaving a great sigh. ‘What’s it all about, anyway?’
‘It?’ Ella looked at her quizzically.
‘Life. You know.’ Caroline waved her cigarette vaguely in the air. ‘Where are we all aiming?’
‘Well, that really depends on your point of view,’ began Ella.
‘I mean, take Patrick,’ interrupted Caroline. ‘All he wants to do is earn money.’
‘And all you want to do is spend it,’ suggested Ella.
‘Well, yes,’ said Caroline, in slight surprise. She caught Ella’s eye and gave a sudden cackle. ‘But what do I want to spend it on?’ she added. ‘That’s the difference.’
‘You’re not having a mid-life crisis, are you?’ said Ella, her eyes twinkling.
‘Christ, no,’ said Caroline. She took a deep drag. ‘The thing is, Patrick and I had a bit of a scene last night. About us paying Nicola’s school fees. It just made me think.’
‘What sort of scene?’
‘He was furious with me for landing him in it. Which I suppose is fair enough.’
‘Hadn’t you talked about it already?’ said Ella in surprise.
‘Oh no. It was completely spur of the moment. Anyway, if I’d asked him beforehand, he would never have agreed. Patrick’s basically a stingy bastard.’
‘Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ said Ella firmly. ‘Not that I approve of private education in principle. But Nicola’s a little bit diffe
rent. And surely you can afford it?’
‘I would have thought so,’ said Caroline. ‘I mean, what if we’d had two children? We would have been able to afford it then, wouldn’t we?’
‘Or three children,’ said Ella.
‘Or five,’ said Caroline. ‘Some fucking chance.’ Her face suddenly clouded over and she stubbed out her cigarette in silence.
Chapter Eleven
By one o’clock, Patrick was presiding over a barbecue.
‘I can’t bear barbecues,’ said Caroline at intervals. She was reclining on a white lounger, eating a plate of chocolate-fudge cake and smoking a cigarette. ‘Bloody awful things.’ She glanced provocatively at Patrick every time she spoke, but his face remained calm.
‘Barbecues are lovely!’ protested Annie in amazement. She was handing out hot dogs in buns to the children and had a smear of tomato ketchup on her cheek. ‘They’re such fun. Those spare ribs smell delicious,’ she added encouragingly to Patrick.
‘They’re just about ready,’ he said. ‘Who’s for a rib?’
‘Who’s for a rib?’ echoed Caroline disparagingly. ‘Who’s for a burnt bone with a shrivelled-up bit of meat attached?’
‘Come on, Stephen,’ said Annie. ‘Have a spare rib. You’ve hardly eaten anything. And you need something after all that tennis.’ She giggled. The match between her, Stephen, Patrick and Caroline had been a desultory affair, undertaken only because of Patrick’s insistence. It had lasted a mere forty minutes, during which time Stephen and Annie had managed to win only two games, despite rallying cries from Don.
‘In a moment,’ said Stephen, taking a swig of beer. ‘You go ahead.’
Stephen wasn’t feeling hungry. Now that he had decided to talk to Patrick about backing out of the deal, he wanted to get it over and done with. He was sure Patrick would make him feel stupid for pulling out of such an opportunity; perhaps it would be easier to leave it till later or even phone him once they were at home. But the thought of prolonging his mortgage commitment – by even a few hours – made Stephen nervous. He had stood for a while by the barbecue, trying to seize his moment to talk to Patrick. But the barbecue was soon surrounded by children, prodding the sausages and asking for ketchup and no mustard and no onion and no lettuce.
He watched Nicola grasp her hot dog awkwardly and take a huge, unguarded bite, and he winced even before she did at the burning-hot sausage inside. She gasped, instinctively opened her mouth to breathe in cool air, and turned pink – not with pain, he knew, but with embarrassment at having been caught out. Stephen felt a chord of recognition within him. She was like him in so many ways. He would spill scalding tea over his hand at a tea party and smile as though it were nothing; he would turn down the wrong street and carry on rather than turn round. Of course, children always take after their parents, he thought, watching her as she quickly breathed in and out, trying to relieve the burning sensation in her mouth, then, adopting a casual air, took a great gulp of cold water. But what no-one ever tells you is that your children inherit just as many of your deficiencies and foibles as they do your better characteristics. He smiled at Nicola.
‘Is that good?’ he said.
‘Delicious,’ she said stoutly. ‘Really yummy.’
‘Not too hot?’ he said, in spite of himself.
‘Oh no,’ she said, as he knew she would. ‘Just right.’
Charles and Cressida were sitting near each other on the grass. They had somehow staggered through the morning, communicating in short, polite phrases; avoiding each other’s gaze. When their eyes did meet, it was with disbelief. This couldn’t be happening to them.
They had arrived downstairs for lunch with an assumed unity; had mustered up smiles and excuses for their lateness with enough good cheer to stave off curious looks. But the others seemed intuitively to know that something was wrong. No-one had come to sit near them; no-one had attempted to bring them into the general barbecue banter. A tacit, perhaps unconscious, avoidance area surrounded them; even Martina and the twins were sitting away from them, with the other children.
Cressida picked abstractly at blades of grass and took tiny bites of the chicken drumstick that Patrick had pressed on her. The food was tasteless in her mouth; her mind was black with misery. She wanted to sit calmly somewhere and think it all out; but her thoughts were too confused; everything seemed to go round in circles. And there seemed to be a missing piece; an unexplained factor which, if she only knew what it was, would slot in to make things clearer. Something – a thought; a memory; an observation – kept tugging at her mind. She groped through her thoughts unhappily, but nothing tallied, nothing made her start with recognition.
She had almost successfully managed to block from her mind the scene last night. Of course Charles had not meant to hit her; he had simply been strung up. It was really her own fault for falling asleep and letting him discover the letter without her breaking the news to him first. In retrospect, it occurred to her, perhaps she should have kept it a secret until she had visited Mr Stanlake and checked that it wasn’t all some awful mistake. Perhaps it had been wrongly addressed to her. Perhaps it should have gone to some other client. She imagined Mr Stanlake smiling at her, tearing the letter up and promising her he would have a stern word with whoever was responsible for worrying her in this way. She would smile gratefully back at him, and ask him to make quite sure no mistakes like that could be made in the future. He would pat her hand and order tea.
This scene was so comforting, Cressida dwelt on it a little bit longer. After all, people made mistakes every day, she reasoned. They dialled wrong numbers often enough; why shouldn’t they have sent out the wrong letter? She glanced surreptitiously at Charles’ sullen face. How relieved he would be if she could tell him it was all a silly error. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that that was what it must be. The thought was cheering.
Charles, sensing Cressida’s eyes on him, quickly looked up, and saw a little smile cross her lips. She was eating her chicken drumstick determinedly, apparently unconcerned by the whole situation. A part of him wanted to work up an outrage that she could behave so naturally, when they were on the brink of ruin. But his senses seemed numbed; he felt blank inside. He couldn’t rouse himself to any strong feelings, one way or the other. When he deliberately reminded himself of the precise amount of money that they might eventually owe, and painstakingly translated that into terms of material goods, a huge grey terror filled him. But it was an abstract terror; it was almost as though he knew he should be terrified – so he was. In the same way that he had never quite been able to believe that all that money in Cressida’s portfolio was his too, so he was unable to relate a demand for a million pounds to himself. Other people dealt in that kind of money. Not him.
Every now and again, he glanced over at Ella. The first time he had seen her that day, the sight had brought back, with a stab, a memory of the night before. Now he couldn’t stop tormenting himself – prodding his own sore spot like a small boy with a bruise. But his senses were becoming numbed towards her, too. The more he looked, the more the pain was dulled. The passion of last night had slipped away; try as he might, he couldn’t recapture it. He reminded himself several times that it was only twelve hours since they had made love so frenziedly that he had sunk into her eager flesh with a strange, mixed feeling of familiarity and newness, that he had shouted, that she had cried out, that he had felt like weeping. But the more he reminded himself, the more it all seemed like a dream. The sensations became more shadowy; the memories of her skin, her hair – even her lips – receded in his mind. He felt hollow and bland; a nothing.
Patrick, standing behind the barbecue, watched Charles, moodily staring at the ground, refusing to join in the party. He and Cressida had obviously had some sort of barney last night – probably over Ella. Patrick didn’t like to think what had gone on between those two last night. But even if the worst hadn’t happened, deciding to go for a midnight walk with an ex-lover wasn’t exac
tly normal behaviour for a married man. Especially a man married to such a lovely creature as Cressida. Patrick’s gaze transferred compassionately to her. She was sitting all alone, like a pale moth on the grass, fiddling with the same chicken drumstick he’d given her half an hour ago.
At the sight of her, Patrick’s antagonism towards Charles increased. He was still smarting from their encounter yesterday; still resentful at the way Charles had dismissed his offer. Since marrying Cressida, Charles behaved as if he had been born and bred into wealth; as if he was somehow superior to everyone else. Of course, it wasn’t his money, everyone knew that. If he hadn’t found himself a rich wife, he would still be in Seymour Road, relying on his pathetic hippy arts centre for a living. Cressida had pulled him up a few notches – and in principle Patrick didn’t mind that. But look at the way he was treating her! Letting her go upstairs to bed by herself like that last night; disappearing outside with Ella; even now, ignoring her completely.
Patrick eyed Cressida’s pale skin, her fluttering eyelids, her delicate hands. She was a real lady, he reflected. She wasn’t the sort to complain, or cause a fuss, or defend herself; she was the sort who would just suffer in silence. And she’d chosen as her protector that pretentious, arrogant Charles – who had only married her for her money, anyway. Patrick’s chest burned in silent indignation, and without looking at what he was doing, he knocked a sausage onto the grass.
‘Daddy!’ cried Georgina. ‘You clumsy!’ She shrieked with laughter, and after seeing what had happened, Caroline joined in.
‘Blast!’ said Patrick, bending down and trying to pick it up with the tongs.
‘That must be enough food now, anyway,’ said Annie. ‘Why don’t you sit down, Patrick? You must be boiled.’
‘Yes, come and sit down,’ said Caroline, in a mollifying voice. ‘Come and have a nice drink.’
As Patrick sat down, Don sidled over.
‘I’ve been looking again at the chart,’ he said.
‘Oh yes?’ said Patrick shortly. There had been a slight scene when Patrick announced that the finalists in the tennis tournament were himself, Caroline, Charles and Cressida. Don had looked shocked; Valerie had expressed voluble disbelief; Patrick had stalked off to light the barbecue.
The Tennis Party Page 18